“Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.”

“Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first.”

“If we will not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the rose, and the air, and the sun.”

“Science does not know its debt to imagination.”

“The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.”

“Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside.”

“The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.”